Nativity of the Lord – December 24 & 25, 2021
Luke 2:1-20

The familiar first lines of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities can aptly describe these past 21 months, as it did of the 18^th century French Revolution about which the 19^th century novel was written: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” We live with opposite realities and have been living in times that are bewildering, anxiety-ridden, challenging, and simply, hard. Millions around the world have died due to the COVID-19 global health pandemic; racial, gender and economic injustices continue to be endemic in every sector of our common humanity and our common life; political divisions are deadly violent; war and civil conflict have caused hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum, lacking in food, water, and shelter; environmental degradation has accelerated global climate change to such a level, posing a real existential threat for the lives of humanity and all of God’s creatures and the beauty of God’s creation. For so many near and dear to us, these are not abstract news headlines; the loss of life is enormous. Our pews, our family gatherings, the Christmas stockings on the mantle, will have one or two or five fewer people singing Christmas carols with us. The depth and length and height and breadth of loss is staggering. This is a very difficult season that seems like it will never cease, and that has become all too familiar. The prayer lists for the “worst of times” reach higher than any SpaceX rocket can ascend.

Can this also be a “best of times” among other “best of times”? That is, not to minimize loss, not to ignore the continuing realities of injustice, of violence, of the failing and fading integrity of being faithful human stewards of God’s creation … but that with these “worst of times” are the glimpses of neighbor embracing neighbor and stranger, of people who were not aware of the histories of us communities of color asking some questions and beginning to reckon with the tragic past of oppression and subjugation of indigenous peoples; of thousands of scientists across the globe working on different pieces of COVID-19 vaccines; of churches and worshipping communities adjusting as best as they could in creatively serving and sharing the love and life of Christ. In other words, we live in times, not unlike other previous times, that is hellish but not all hell, that is heavenly, but not all heaven.

In these unfamiliar times, as with the Gospel lection for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, is the familiar promise of the Savior. There is a soothing balm to our hearts and souls to just close our eyes, to invite our family and congregations to do likewise … to listen to the reading of this lectionary text. It’s so familiar because all of us have seen it enacted by children’s plays, by choir cantatas, by our own preaching, by Lessons & Carols readings. That’s why it’s so powerful. That’s why while it’s the “worst of times” in every generation, it’s also the “best of times” because the promise and the very presence of the Savior makes every moment transform our time to one that is sacredly sublime, precisely because the reality of our humanity – the beauty and warts of all us, the sinfulness and brokenness of who we are that is also fully loved, forgiven, valued, reconciled, redeemed, and made whole – all of who we are and what this world is and has – is right there, in the familiar story, with the Holy Family, the Word made flesh, the incarnate Son of God, Jesus the Christ.